Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast coming

to you from the QI offices in Covert Garden.

My name is Dan Schreiber, I am sitting here with Anich Zinski, James Harkin and Andy Murray,

and once again we've gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last

seven days and in a particular order, here we go. Starting with you, James.

Okay, my fact this week is that the Great Wall of China is held together by Sticky Rice.

Right.

This is not true.

It's true.

How is that possible?

Well, it's the mortar that holds the bricks together.

It must be extremely overcooks, because I don't think that's good Sticky Rice if it's like cement.

Well, what they found is that they've got this kind of mortar which is half organic and half

inorganic and the organic compounds in it is something called Amelou Pectin, which is

like a starchy stuff that you would get if you cut potatoes or rice or whatever.

And they're pretty certain that they got that through cooking Sticky Rice and then extracting

this starch and then just mixing it with lime and making the mortar.

Wow.

It's really cool.

I've always thought food would make great cement because have you ever left the remnants of a wheat-a-bix?

Yeah, wheat-a-bix.

Why are we not using wheat-a-bix to hold buildings together?

...